Aboard a space station in the midst of being decommissioned,
ageing fleet veteran war hero Ida Cleveland is assigned, minus the decoration
and glory that should come with having saved a planet. His past heroics dubbed
lies by the skeleton staff marines counting down the hours to their eventual
departure from the derelict Coast City. Faced with unwelcome hostility and a
deep sense of isolation, he forms a bond with the reclusive Izanami, a young
woman who shares Ida’s obsession with a mysterious signal from afar.
Said signal appears to be from a long dead cosmonaut and only
comes about as a result of Ida’s tinkering with a space radio. Little does he
know, this seemingly innocuous communication is tied to a much larger mystery,
one that goes outside the boundaries of sci-fi and into the blood curdling
world of suspenseful horror.
Author Adam Christopher (EMPIRE STATE, HANG WIRE) envelopes
the reader in a shroud of atmospheric darkness that pays homage to the horror/sci-fi
mash genre of fiction as well as brining a little bit of action and thriller
elements aboard the creepy deep space station.
What started out as a space opera of sorts fuelled by a
world breaking battle in the skies above a planet in danger of being consumed
by larger than imaginable mechanical alien spiders evolves into a much more
interesting and deeply engrossing tale of survival, horror, and military
conspiracy.
Being on a sci-fi kick at the moment, THE BURNING DARK
ticked all the right boxes for me. I would’ve liked more page time dedicated to
characters like Zia Hollywood (a rich VIP who arrives at the station as a guest
under somewhat questionable rationale) and Serra (a psi-marine whose back-story
warranted further elaboration) but that’s a minor comment in what looks to be a
very promising and unique series from Adam Christopher.
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